European Academy of Design

I’m really excited to have the opportunity to travel to Paris this coming April to present a paper written with Erik Stolterman at the 2015 EAD conference. Our paper is part of the design theory / design philosophy track, which you can read more about here. The paper abstract follows:

This paper asks, Can there be scientific theories of design that do not scientize design? And it answers in the affirmative. Not only can there be scientific theories of design that do not scientize design but also that a scientific lens can potentially reveal important aspects of the design process. We apply Karl Popper’s criteria for the scientific status of a theory to four seminal theories of the design process: Bounded Rationality, FBS Framework, Figural Complexity, and C-K Theory. We demonstrate that (1) some theories about design can be construed as scientific in Popper’s terms, and that (2) these theories do not “scientize” the design process.